Why won't my laptop recognize my brand new internal hard drive?

Hello,

Yesterday I put in a brand new WD 1TB internal hard drive for my 2009 Macbook Pro. I followed every instruction carefully, but when I turned on my laptop, it flashes a folder with a question mark. Is it because my new hard drive doesn't have any of my data on it?

1 Answer

Your new drive has not been formatted for MAC. Try hooking up a ethernet connection to the internet and hold down the R key while starting up to see if it will connect to Apple and get you to Disk Utilities. Or startup from your original system installation DVD, go to Disk Utilities and format the drive then install a system. Then you can do upgrades. If your old drive failed I would highly recommend replacing the Hard Drive/ IR cable as these are know to destroy hard drives.